Windows

So I know I’m not the first and I most definitely won’t be the last to jump inside the Ubuntu “circle of love”.

My boyfriend warns me that Ubuntu may go the way of some other long-gone Linux Distro’s but I say, “pah, you pessimist!” and he just grunts and gives me that “you question my wisdom?” look over the top of his glasses. I on the other hand am very much a girlie (even at 44 years old) and I love pretty wallpapers and sexy themes and neato plasmoids that “do things”, like rotate pics of my kids or keep me updated on my twitter stream.

I don’t have enough experience to say one way or the other if Ubuntu has the staying power to outlast anything thrown at it. As a virtual noob, It looks like it to me. I’ve had a hell of a time letting go of Windows (I still have Windows on my office desktop and my hp tablet pc) I’m starting to lean more and more towards an all Ubuntu lifestyle (almost all, I like the ability to play a PC game on occasion). If *nix starts distributing PC Games for the mainstream you bet I’m dropping Windows.

I started the move to Ubuntu because after discovering Virtual Box over a year ago and installing Debian and Ubuntu on virtual machines on my system I started to use my *nix based virtual box more than my Windows host. I love to work on websites through sftp and using Kate Text Editor to work on css files (and Plone templates). Now I have Windows Vista in a virtual box on my Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 machine, my Ubuntu machine is a week old. I haven’t needed my Windows Vista VM for a few days.
I’m getting really weird about it. Boyfriend calls it being “geeky” but last night I was up until 2am installing OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Amarok. I had broken the sound on my Ubuntu box, the boyfriend says it’s because I didn’t have any speakers connected (silly man, you weren’t there when I was on the floor plugging in one of many speaker sets I have hanging around, but ok, yes I didn’t have any speakers connected) I have sound on Ubuntu that’s all that matters. Next challenge is getting Flash working right, I can see stuff, but no sound on flash yet.

My goal here is to bring my Ubuntu install as close as possible to what I am used to but with the added stability and reduction in overall cost of a *nix based machine. My kids machines are next.

I’m a little disappointed in the “look” of OpenOffice. Shallow and selfish of me I’m sure but I can’t help but love the Mac “look” and the Windows Office “ribbon”. It appeals to my highly visual nature. I don’t like grey, partly because it reminds me of all the times my dad (a C programmer and database administrator for over 30 years) tried to get me interested in computers and programming. “hah, no way dad, I’m going to be an aaaactrrrress” (not a misspell there, that’s how you say it, with emphasis)

Flash forward 30 years, guess what I’m not 😛 I’m not a programmer and I’m not an actress 🙂 I’m a designer with a penchant for templating cms systems. Just shoot me now.